INFORMATION / TALKING POINTS

The 6,000 member Dallas Safari Club will auction off rare animals hunts
this weekend during the banquet at its annual convention, which is a
“showcase of hunting, sporting and outdoor adventure,” according to the
Club’s website. During the auction, “bidders of any age or gender” will have
the chance to bid on “amazing items,” including “youth hunts in New Zealand
and Texas, a challenging Mid-Asian ibex hunt in Russia, and a bongo hunt in
Cameroon.”

Click to see enlarged image

The 2014 convention made international headlines when one attendee, Corey
Knowlton, paid $350,000 to shoot an endangered black rhino in Namibia. Mr.
Knowlton, who has purportedly received death threats, tells critics that he
is motivated by “conservation.” Specifically, he claims that his substantial
contribution will be allocated to rhino conservation efforts and that
killing the rhino in question would actually benefit other rhinos in the
area who he has been attacking.

But, if conservation is really Mr. Knowlton’s motivation, then why
doesn’t he allocate a small part of his winning bid to relocate him? And, if
he’s concerned that the menacing rhino is harming the others, then why
hasn’t he shot him down hasn’t he done it in the 12 months since he won the
bid? Could it be because the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has not yet issued
a permit to import the rhino’s body and that Mr. Knowlton has no intention
of returning from Africa without his “trophy.”

In an interview with Jane Velez-Mitchell on
JaneUnchained.com,
Christopher Gervais, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival
& Biodiversity Conference, says that killing animals is not the way to
preserve them:

You do not hunt a vulnerable species in the name of
conservation. Other organizations are conserving without hunting and
killing.

Conservation funds. he says, can be raised through photography safaris
during which animals are shot with cameras instead of guns.

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